2011 Word for the Year

Otter by Sydney Harper
Watercolor, 5 x 5 inches

I know, I was in the middle of art every day in November when I kind of dropped off.  Okay, so it ended up being art every other day. The painting above was my last one for November.  I will blame it on last year's word for the year, Abundance. For the past couple of years, I've chosen a single word to guide me for the year instead of a set of New Year's resolutions.

I have to admit there was plenty of abundance last year. There was happiness, depression, anger, laughter, work, struggles, celebrations, nervousness, new obstacles to overcome, new routines to learn, new jobs to learn, new friends, and much more. It seems like much more than one year has gone by. By the time November rolled around I was exhausted and feeling like I had a little too much abundance. Okay, an abundance of money would have been a nice touch but I had enough money. While I kept up with my art, there was just too much going on in my life to do as much as I wanted. Overall it was a good year and I had a lot of fun, but I'm ready for a little less abundance now.

My word for this year is Courage. It's the simple things that often give me trouble. Moving to another country by myself is a piece of cake. Picking up the phone to call someone can be terrifying. My dislike of phones is notorious. So it's those little things I would like to work on this year. I almost chose Release for my word. There's a lot of stuff I need to release and it would work for releasing my fears too. So I guess I'm keeping it as secondary word. So far the year is off to an excellent start, so I think I've made a good choice.

Days 11 and 12: Gorilla and Goat

So it started out as art every day month. Then it became art almost every day month. Then it became 30 pictures in 30 days. Now I'm back to art most days (most being more than 15). Hey it's been a good experience though.
Numbers 11 and 12 are sketches from some photos I took a few years ago at the Atlanta Zoo. The one above is a gorilla. The one below is a goat from the petting zoo section.

Both are done in ink. Recently I bought How to Draw Animals by Jack Hamm. It's a small book but it's packed with good information. A lot of space is spent on structure and comparing the structure of various animals. Heads, feet, eyes, ears and noses are compared. It discusses how to use a house cat as a model for a big cat. I've found it very helpful.

AEDM Day 10: I'm a Chicken

"I'm a chicken"
Ink and watercolor, 5 x 5 inches

I've had a huge urge to paint chickens lately. I blame Roz and Jean Haines. I didn't have any chickens or chicken photos of my own (Wait I just might have a few chicken photos.), so I browsed around morgueFile to find one. This chicken was fun to paint. I can see more chicken paintings in my future.

A Meerkat and a Template Change

Meerkat, 7 x 5 inches, acrylic on illustration board
© 2010 Sydney Harper

I changed my template to one of the new Blogger templates. I’ve read that it doesn’t work well with IE6, but I have no way to test that. So if you’re using IE6 and having problems, that’s why. I like the new template choices though!

I’m still painting from some Atlanta Zoo photos I took a while back. This is a little acrylic painting of a Meerkat. All of the meerkats there looked a little chunkier than the ones I’ve seen on TV. I don’t know if it’s just better fed than wild meerkats or a different, chunkier meerkat than the ones I’ve seen. It was perfect for a limited palette painting.

I’ve been filling in for someone who hasn’t been able to work lately. I don’t really mind but it has thrown me off schedule and limited my painting and drawing time. I’m slowly getting back on track.

A few links.

Here’s a few interesting links I’ve found lately.

The Dimensions of Color by David Briggs. If you’ve been wanting more technical information about color, this is your place. I plan to spend more time here. I like the 3 dimensional color space. There are also several interactive graphs that are helpful. (via James Gurney)

Harmony is an online drawing tool written in HTML5. It won’t work at all in Internet Explorer, so don’t even try. (via Drawn!) The Drawn! link has some example drawings and a video.

Flame is another online drawing tool I found on Drawn!. It does much as its name suggests. It is a flame-like brush tool that lets you select color, noise, softness and other characteristics.

An Elephant and My Word for the Year

“Elephant in the Sun” – © 2010 Sydney Harper
Ink and watercolor on Bristol – 9 x 12 inches

About a year and a half ago, I spent the day at the zoo in Atlanta, Georgia taking lots of pictures. I assume a lot of that red-orange color came from the red clay they have in the area. These photos have been good inspiration for those times when I don’t know what to draw.

I have plenty of watercolor paper but it’s all cold-press and I don’t particularly like to draw on cold-press. So I thought I would try Bristol. I like drawing on Bristol but I’ve never tried watercolor.  It has an unusual combination of being slick and absorbent at the same time. It was a little frustrating at times but not too bad.  I think I’m going to put hot-press watercolor paper on my “To Buy” list.

Word of the Year

I realized that I hadn’t posted my word of the year for 2010 yet. I got the Word of the Year idea from Christine Kane’s Blog.  My word for last year was Delight. Most of last year was anything but Delightful though. Then I realized that most of last year was about getting myself in a place where I could experience more delight. So far this year has been much much better than last year.

That brings me to this year’s Word of Year – Abundance. I’m necessarily talking about things and money, although they’re nice too. It’s also about abundant fun, friends, success, health, etc. Basically I’m looking for more of the good things in life that I was lacking last year. So bring it on!

Katie Cat and Four Motivational Links

Katie Cat. © Sydney Harper
8 x 10 inches. Acrylic on hardboard.

Update: I replaced the picture. I kept looking at the painting thinking something wasn't quite right. Then I figured it out. Whiskers! LOL!

I have sketched Katie many times, but I never painted her or any other cat until now. It took me a while to finally say “Done”. I started it in 2009. I would paint a bit, let it sit for a while and then go back to paint some more. Finally I got to the point where I was done with it. There’s some things I would do differently next time but I was ready to move on from this one.

I’m still working on my goals for 2010 so here are four interesting links I found over the holidays. Hopefully they’ll help you, and me, get motivated to do whatever we have been putting off.

• Is there a fear shortage? Seth Godin covers a topic that is a pet peeve of mine.
  
• Beware of Life. Chris Guillebeau covers a similar topic. The comments are worth reading too. Note I’m not proposing that you go out and be reckless, but maybe there is something you keep putting off out of fear.
  
• Get Excited and Make Things! Wil Wheaton urges everyone to quit procrastinating and make whatever it is they have been wanting to make.
  
• Finally, a bit of Patience for the thing you are going to do. This is a lovely video about a book within a book within a… It’s a little over 6 minutes long.

Segments: Armadillo

Armadillo, 9 x 7 in., watercolor
by Sydney Harper

I decided to apply the technique I used for the trilobite paintings to a painting of an armadillo. Armadillos kind of remind me of trilobites in a way. I've decided to call this group of paintings "Segments". I'm having a blast with these. Most of the work comes before the paint is applied. Applying the paint also allows me to experiment with different palettes. I'm sure I'll try more of these, just to see where it leads me.

After tomorrow I'll be off work until January 5. I am so looking forward to this time off. I'm really tired so it's been a struggle to get through these past two days. I plan to spend the time relaxing, getting my life in order, and doing some painting and sketching. I never get as much done as I plan, but it will be a nice change of pace.

Dexter Ferret

Dexter Ferret

copyright by Sydney Harper

One of my goals for this year is to practice drawing animals and people. Since we have a cat and three ferrets, that's an obvious place to start. I've had a harder time with the ferrets though. I'm not sure why. This drawing of our ferret Dexter finally looks proportioned right. I'm pleased with it. The others are okay, but everything clicked with this one. Isn't it great when that happens? Now today's goal will be to do a bit of painting.

Elephant

I haven't used pastels very often and even though I have a lot of animals around me, I haven't drawn or painted very many. So I decided to practice both. This elephant is done in pastels on a 9 x 12 inch sheet of beige pastel paper. It ended up being too close to the edges of the sheet and it doesn't quite fit on the scanner.